


31 December, 2014 (and about fucking time)

by Zabbers



Category: The Thick of It (TV)
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-01-01
Updated: 2015-01-01
Packaged: 2018-03-04 15:49:23
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,345
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3073484
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Zabbers/pseuds/Zabbers
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>It's 9pm London time on New Year's Eve 2014, and this author has just been prompted for a fic in which Malcolm and Jamie "make out at midnight". The author obliges, in realtime, and finds it the most exciting thing she has ever done for NYE.</p>
            </blockquote>





	31 December, 2014 (and about fucking time)

_10 p.m._

Technically, the invitation came weeks ago. Technically, Malcolm never said he’d go. But then his mobile rings, and it’s Jamie, and when he ignores the call, there’s a text, and then another.

He has to look.

It’ll be a mass text, a generic new year’s well-wishes to a short list--Malcolm is still, after so long, on the shortlist, he thinks--of close acquiantances. Friends, extended family. The sort of people you used to send Christmas cards out of a boxed set, cards with robins and snowy scenes, wooden houses and triangular trees on, embossed cardstock scented like wrapping paper and department stores and December’s hotel lobbies. Now texts.

Still, he has to look.

It is Jamie.

It isn’t a new year’s greeting.

He stands in front of his closet for a long time, trying not to look at himself in the mirror in the door, trying not to care that he cares what he’s going to wear.

 

_10:30 p.m._

In the taxi he looks at the two texts again.

_Going to Dermot’s do?_

_I am._

Malcolm fights down his nerves as he steps onto the pavement, past the waiting concierge, and into the lift. It’s empty, thank god; anyone showing up is either already there or yet to arrive, hopping engagements so as to make as many appearances as possible. It’s a strangely muted stay of sentence, the moment of stillness before the storm, except the storm is already blowing and battering inside his chest, in his gut. As the light climbs up the numbers, counting closer floor by floor to the inevitable point of no return (as though he’s not already committed), Malcolm has an insight into what it must be like to be claustrophobic.

The lift slides to its smoothly urbane stop.

The doors open.

 

_10:45 p.m._

He’s there five minutes and he feels like a cornered animal.

Slinking along the walls, hugging the inconspicuous corners. A bewildered, wary thing; he thinks he hasn’t blinked since he walked out of the lift, and he’s looking everywhere, trying not to catch anyone’s attention, trying to find the one person whose attention...well, the fucker texted _him_ , so where the hell is he?

He thinks, _if I don’t see him in the next ten minutes I’ll go_.

He thinks, _if I don’t see him in the next ten minutes, I’ll go critical faster than an outdated reactor on the night watch with a faulty computer warning system_.

He thinks, _if I don’t see him, I’m done_.

He’s uncomfortable in the suit he picked out, because none of his clothes fit him right anymore and he hasn’t bothered to have them refitted. He’s uncomfortable at a Party party only half the revellers at which he knows (but knows too well, from too far back). Uncomfortable in his own skin.

He doesn’t want to draw any attention, and he doesn’t know how to be at one of these things without being the centre of attention, without at least running the currents of attention, the gravitational pulls and the tides. He doesn’t know how to do this without Jamie by his side. Never did. (He pretended; he was always drowning.)

And then, at last and too suddenly--there he is.

 

_11 p.m._

“You didn’t text back,” Jamie says accusingly. “You didn’t fucking text back.”

Malcolm has never been mute in his life. He’s mute now. Jamie’s drawn all the words out of him with his angry eyes and his _aliveness_.

Which is some kind of fucking messed up fight or flight imbecilic hindbrain thinking because Jamie’s aliveness was never in question. Malcolm’s own, maybe. Malcolm’s own, all right, abso-fucking-lutely, in this recluse’s existence he’s been enduring, in this day after insipid, blank bland day, in all the days since he banished meaning, shut the door on his own soul, deadlocked and chained it. Never Jamie’s.

 

_11:30 p.m._

But then Jamie seems to come to some kind of decision. But then Jamie visibly relaxes like a boxer dropping his gloves, and he smiles, and Malcolm is simultaneously blinded by the brilliance of that smile and suddenly aware of every detail of this newly present Jamie, as though looking at a familiar photo reconstructed with an updated camera, as though someone has taken a digital image and upped its resolution. He sees crows’ feet, grey hairs. He sees the pores on Jamie’s skin, and the pigments in Jamie’s eyes.

“Fucking hell, Malc,” Jamie says, and Malcolm realises he hasn’t managed to smile back, still hasn’t managed to say anything or acknowledge the lack of an acknowledgment, like they were just talking to each other yesterday. Can’t actually process any of this, is Jamie angry or is he being gentle? “C’mon, we need to drink.”

Malcolm follows Jamie to the bar, allowing Jamie to field the surprised faces and the hellos, obediently grips the glass Jamie hands him and blinks as they don’t head towards the wildly gesturing Dermot on the far side of the room.

 

_11:45 p.m._

“I wasn’t going to come,” he says. “Didn’t think there was much to fucking celebrate, or to look forward to. Didn’t think I had any reason to go to a party, see a lot of twats I don’t care about any more.”

Jamie doesn’t flinch but Malcolm can see the beginnings of a pugnacious furrow, and he wants to say _Of course I didn’t mean you, you cretin_ , but he doesn’t want to have to.

It’s Malcolm who looks away. Malcolm who averts with a deep drink and a long look around the room.

“What the hell are you doing here, Jamie?” he continues, when what he means is _What the hell are_ we _doing here, what are we doing, it’s fucking 2015 in fifteen minutes, what the fuck have we been doing?_

 

_11:50 p.m._

“You never fucking text back.”

Jamie _is_ angry. Jamie’s drawn all the words out of him with one drink and his smile and his hand fisted around his lapel. Malcolm leans in to that anger, relieved--glad--to have something concrete to push against. He glares at the hand and reaches for Jamie’s arm and pulls them away from the standing table, pulls them out of the way of curious eyes, pushes Jamie against a wall in a corner, so close it’s like that night so many years ago never turned into ugly, baggy-eyed dawn.

 

_11:59 p.m._

Someone is counting down. Malcolm doesn’t know if they’re fighting or flirting or making last-minute confessions as if the countdown is to the end of the world and not the end of the year. He only knows how good it feels to feel something, and how good it feels to feel something about Jamie, with Jamie.

 

_Midnight_

It’s a coincidence--a fucking coincidence--that when they kiss it’s midnight.

Malcolm’s still not sure Jamie’s not going to hit him, so not ending this kiss, not pulling away seems like a very good idea. Malcolm’s dropped the empty glass onto the carpeted floor, and he can only assume Jamie’s done the same with his, because both of Jamie’s hands are as busily involved with the small of Malcolm’s back and the blade of Malcolm’s shoulder as Malcolm’s are with the back of Jamie’s neck.

Malcolm’s pretty sure he’s going to need to breathe pretty fucking soon, he’s not twenty-five anymore (and they’re not lads in an alley behind a bar anymore, no one watching, no one seeing, not anymore) and he’s pretty sure he doesn’t fucking care.

 

_2015_

He’s very sure, because Jamie is here.

It’s fucking 2015, and Jamie is here, and Jamie’s mouth and his hands and his whole body says they’re not spending another year apart; and Malcolm’s word, which he says, in turn, with his entire fucking _being_ and later, after, will speak with all the words and all the breath available to him, is _yes_ , is stay, is that he’s sure, and only sure, always sure: when Jamie is here.

**Author's Note:**

> I blame nateobite and dimmdoc.


End file.
